overallpolicyofhowistheforeignaffairsbudget, the state department budget would be prioritize in the entire region as opposed to just focusing on one country since they seem to be working together ever before? >> well, thank you very much, congressman meeks. i am very, very hopeful. i am planning a trip shortly to both colombia and brazil and other countries hopefully as time permits. we've had some issues, obviously, with argentina over some debt issues, repayment, so forth, which we need to work through. but, look, western hemisphere is our back yard. it's critical to us. too often countries in the western hemisphere think that the united states doesn't pay enough attention to them and on occasion it's probably been true. i think we need to reach out vigorously. we plan to. the president will be traveling to mexico very shortly. other -- i can't many countries. he will be going. i will be going, other high-level visits. we'll try to do everything possible to try to change the attitude of a number of nations where we've had obviously sort of a breach in the relationship ove

characterized the treatment as torture when usedbyforeigngovernments.the c.i.a. recognized this in an internal review and realized many of the interrogation techniques employed were contrary with the policy the u.s. has taken regarding human rights. the united states is understandably subject to criticism when it criticizes another nation for engaging in torture and then justifies the same conduct under national security arguments. there are those that defend the techniques like waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation because there was the office of legal council which issued a decision approving of their use because they defined them as not being torture. those decisions have since been repudiated by the o.l.c. it's sefment even in it's peap it relies not only on a narrow definition of torture but also on factual representation about how the techniques would be implemented that later proved inaccurate. this is important context as to how the opinion came about, but also as to how policymakers relied upon it. based upon a thorough review of the available reco